


Service

by karanguni



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, F/M, Service Kink, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:14:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28208151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: 'You have yourself a Deal,' John said, and felt the power of the words rise up in him just the same as they had in a world of darkness.
Relationships: Helen Wick/John Wick
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Service

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sakuramacaron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakuramacaron/gifts).



'Why do you do what you do?' Helen had asked him, a lifetime ago. They'd been in bed together; a storm raged overhead. John remembered how he'd been able to feel the air charge itself just before flashes of lightning struck; how the energy had felt in his arms, his tendons, his veins. He remembered how, in spite of that, he hadn't felt the urge to move with the power within him.

Instead, he'd cupped her cheek in his hand and murmured, 'Are you asking me why do I do the job?'

'Yeah,' Helen'd said, returning the gesture. The stroke of her thumb against his cheekbone had been gentle and unthreatening. 'It isn't like you.'

That had made John laugh, as only Helen could make him do. 'You'd be the only one to think like that.'

'I think,' Helen had said, considering and almost a little playful, 'that you're _good_ at it. Doesn't mean it's like you.'

And John'd asked, 'What do you think I'm like?'

And Helen'd said, 'Someone who likes to make other people happy.'

Which had been the most absurd thing in the world for someone like John – born with too much magic in him and bred to have too much blood on his hands – to hear. But it had been true.

* * *

John thought about what Helen had said for a little while. Six months, which was a little while by his measurement of time, anyway: time enough for two jobs, both easy enough to be boring but nevertheless sufficient.

'Sufficiency,' John murmured to himself, looking in the mirror as he straightened his tie. 'Right.'

As a concession to romance, he only strapped on his smallest gun, and even then to his ankle. He picked Helen up from her apartment near Morningside Heights by violating several traffic laws parking by the curb while waiting for her to get downstairs. Policemen tended to walk away from his car.

'What's for dinner?' Helen asked, getting into the car. She was dressed in scrubs, since she had a shift right after, and still more beautiful than all the _vila_ dressed in haute couture that John had ever seen. He'd seen many.

'Thought we'd go get Thai,' John said, because it was her favourite.

'You can take us somewhere that _you_ like, you know,' she teased him. 'It's been nearly a year of us dating, John. All I know is that you like your coffee with milk and honey.'

Nectar of the earth, really. 'I like coffee with milk and honey,' John shrugged, smiling quietly.

'But no other kind of food?'

'Most of the time,' John admitted, 'it doesn't sustain me.'

There: he'd said it to Helen, and therefore to an outsider. He wasn't supposed to, but this was one of the rules so fundamental that no one thought to write them down. John couldn't break promises to unenforced ancient tradition; Asylums usually took in, and took care, of people who claimed fairies were real. If you loved someone in the mundane world enough, you tended not to tell them for want of not being able to protect them. That was not a problem John had.

Helen looked over at him. 'Is this part of your... job world?'

'Yes,' John said, catching her eye momentarily. He looked back at the road. 'And no. See, not all of us are strictly human. _I'm_ not strictly... human.'

He waited for a response, suddenly acutely aware that he'd put Helen in a moving vehicle for this conversation so that she couldn't simply run from him and unsure about how he felt about his ability to reflect upon that.

Helen laughed.

'Sorry,' John offered, not knowing what else to say.

'John,' she said, voice light. 'In the time that I've known you, you've been shot... more than five times?'

'Eighteen,' John corrected with a quiet huff. 'It's been a year, Helen; I haven't been slacking.'

'I rest my case,' she pronounced.

'What do you mean?'

'John,' Helen said, a smile on her lips that meant she knew something that he didn't, 'sorry to break it to you, but most humans don't come back from being shot eighteen times in a year and still manage to climb up my rickety fire escape at two in the morning.'

'I wanted to see you,' John objected helplessly. 'I wasn't thinking straight.'

'Because that night you'd been shot twice,' Helen provided, helpful. 'And so it's not really coming as a surprise. I'm a nurse, John. That's what _I_ do.'

'Oh,' John said. 'Right.'

For a while, they just drove down the westside highway in silence.

'So why doesn't food sustain you?' Helen asked. Her voice sounded no different than it usually did, only curious.

'Because it doesn't have any substance,' John said, relieved. 'Most of it isn't... sufficient.'

'Are you a vampire?'

John snorted. 'No. Blood helps, but not to drink. It's the... weight of it, I guess.' He frowned. 'I've never had to explain.'

'Try harder,' Helen said, which made it easier. She knew how to push.

'Favours owed and favours returned,' John listed. 'Blood for blood; gold for gold. That's what sustains us. Service and repayment.'

'Is that why you're always making my bed and cooking me breakfast?' Helen asked. It was not, John could tell, a joke.

'Part of it,' he said, and lifted his hand from the shifter to reach for her hand. 'Not all of it.'

Helen took it. 'Good,' she said. 'So do this for me, John: tell me which of humanity's many, many, _many_ cuisines would you like to try out tonight? We're in New York City. The world's our oyster.'

John felt the world realign. 'Chinese,' he said out loud, and felt molten satisfaction run down his spine.

* * *

They were strolling along a beach at sunset, talking about the world of the mundane – nurses' salaries in particular – when it occurred to John that he could simply make that problem go away for Helen.

'I've got money,' he said. 'Lots of money.'

Helen stopped to look up at him. 'You can't buy me, John Wick,' she warned.

God above. John raised both his hands in the air: surprise, surrender, supplication. 'No, no, that's not what I meant.'

Helen narrowed her eyes. 'What _did_ you mean?'

'I mean that I have more than enough money for you to do whatever you want and not worry,' he said. 'I don't want you to have to worry. You said I can make people happy without shooting people. You're right. This is... the same.' No bonds: not to people who didn't matter; never mind the High Table, John did not want hospital administrators dictating Helen's life choices.

Helen blinked once at him, evaluating, then took his arm again. 'I suppose that's not the worst thing in the world,' she hummed, but she was smiling. 'Why do they pay you in coins _and_ money, anyway?'

'Humans render _some_ services, too,' John said, deadpan.

Helen pinched him on the arm. If he could have felt that small a degree of pain, John would have treasured it.

* * *

Would he have ever known that learning how to bake bread for another person would give him as much pleasure as a bullet put neatly through someone's heart for a job meant to be executed quietly?

They had never taught any of their kind kindness.

 _I have served,_ was what was taught. ' _I will be of service._ '

Favour for favour, blood for blood, power for power. There had never been another way.

John supposed that if _he_ were Management, and not Service, he would not have wanted Service to know that other ways could exist, either.

'If I promise to get out,' John asked Helen, 'will you marry me?'

Helen took his hands in hers, the hands she'd taught a thousand other things than the things John was good at, and said, 'I will.'

* * *

Afterwards – after paying his price, and then for the land for their house, and then for the consecration of that land, and then for the architects who had to come make plans for the house, and then for the house itself, and then for all the things that had to _go_ in the house – after all of those costs mundane and magical were each paid up in full, John woke up one morning, married to a new way of living, and made Helen breakfast.

'John,' she said, coming out of their bedroom with her robe tied around her waist and yawning, 'it's seven in the morning, what are you _doing_?'

'Making us food,' John said, smiling.

Helen sat at the kitchen counter, rubbing sleep from her eyes. 'You're making Thai for breakfast?' she asked, looking at the steaming wok on the burner.

'Yeah,' John said. 'It fills me up.'

Helen propped her elbows on the counter and smiled because she knew. 'Trade you coffee for you not making it too hot.'

'You have yourself a Deal,' John said, and felt the power of the words rise up in him just the same as they had in a world of darkness.


End file.
